I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

We're your family now

Just a quickie.

How many Americans did CCP Bro effectively disenfranchise from the New Eden Open Tournament by scheduling it to straddle the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend? I'll bet this is not a small number, and is likely to bar your humble narrator from participating or even watching much of it.

Count this among the many zany decisions made about this tournament.

If only there was some sort of player group that CCP devs could run these sort of decisions past to ensure they make sense.

TG is a big travel weekend for some... and the biggest travel week for the whole year in the US... but it is the Saturday afterwards. I didn't blink at the date. I am usually just concerned about the quantity of leftovers and whether online shopping has brought down the internet by that point. But we host TG at our house every year, so I might be biased. People come to us.

Without Wikipedia I wouldnt even know what thanks giving is. And coming from NZ, living in Scotland in an England dominated Union, playing a game from Iceland, I deal with holiday issues all the time. I don't know why I should have to also deal with US ones.

This isn't President's Day, MLK Day or some other "bank" holiday. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two biggest holidays in the States and no small amount of players are going to be excluded from the tournament because of this decision. I'm glad it doesn't affect you, but the tens of thousands of EVE players that it does appreciate your concern.

Who's asking you to deal with anything? The point is that to schedule a tournament on a date that happens to coincide with the biggest travel weekend of the year in the country that provides the biggest share of your subscribers is a rather stupid business decision.

The date was chosen deliberately. CCP wants to discourage large numbers of US players signing up for the tournament, because the US players also happen to have the fattest RL wallets and can outbid most of the other players for a tournament slot. This sort of P2W is a particularly sore issue with many non-US players.

CCP also does not want this to turn into a US-only (or US-dominated) tournament. By putting it on a major holiday weekend, they assume that only the most hardcore of the US players will participate. The less hardcore can just go visit grandma and eat turkey instead.

I doubt that. If you look at per-capita income (measured by GDP divided by population), the US is within the top 20 but still behind quite a few European countries that have significant player populations (still ahead of the UK though).

However, the income distribution in the USA is significantly more unequal than in all of the EU countries. Even more than in Russia. That means that an average European is more likely to be affluent than an average US citizen. On the other hand, a rich US citizen will most likely be quite a bit richer than a European in the same social class, but there are just less of them. (That distribution is measured by the Gini Coefficient - you can look it up)

So except if you are saying that all the US Americans who play EVE are from a rich upper class background where more income is concentrated when compared to an average EU country, then that statement of yours does not quite hold any water.

(Disclaimer, I didn't know this either, I asked someone who is an economist whether the statement could be true, and what I wrote was the answer I got Data sources are the IMF and World Bank)

Per capita income and wealth distribution isn't the right way to look at this - since those statistics include mostly non-game players. You have to consider the actual game player demographics.

In general, I think that it is correct to state that US game players, on average, spend much more money on computer and video games, than players from most other Eve countries, except possibly Japan (S.Korea isn't currently an Eve country). At least, game publishers certainly think so.

I also suspect that, if we were to look at Eve-only statistics, we'd find US players holding the majority for such things as:

a) players who pay RL cash for their subs;b) players who pay RL cash for multiple accounts; and c) players who buy PLEX and sell them for ISK

Americans have odd priorities. They will spend more money on their hobbies (like golf or video games), than on things that other people consider to be more important (like health insurance or food and clothing). I know Americans who have spent thousands of USD on sets of golf clubs, but I've never met a Russian yet who has ever done anything even remotely similar.

So, it isn't unreasonable to speculate that more US players might be willing to buy their way into a tournament slot, than EU or Russian players.

Whether or not CCP thinks so, too.... well, that would probably be giving CCP too much credit for thinking... lol.

ironic seeing as how i just watched an interesting presentation by a self-confessed RMT guru saying the western model discourages P2W compared to the Asian market...or at least the 'acceptance' of unfairness in a ultra competitive, leaderboard focused markethttp://syncaine.com/2012/10/04/china-is-a-scary-place-for-mmo-gaming/

Maybe there were legal issues they wanted to minimize their exposure to? The laws in each state are different, but there are 9 states IIRC that make cash-prize-with-entry-fee "Games of Skill" illegal to play online (as opposed to "Games of Chance", which are illegal in all 50 states). Then there's the issue of whether or not PLEX as an entry fee constitutes money.

In short, maybe CCP chose the dates precisely to discourage Americans from taking part, hoping to sidestep any messy consequences.

I can't image CCP would have any legal exposure so long as conducting such a tournament is legal in Iceland. It's up to players to behave within the parameters of local/national laws that apply to them, not CCP to police that behavior.

It's impossible for me to believe that CCP did not consider the impact of a major holiday in the country which provides its single largest source of subscribers. After all, there are at least a few folks from the U.S. who work in Iceland and surely the importance of the Thanksgiving weekend to Americans is by now well known even in Iceland. However, it's possible CCP may have figured it the other way around, assuming that MORE people would be available to participate due to the holiday. I wonder if they discussed this at all with the CSM to get some perspective on the potential impact.

CCP's exposure would be nil, as they are an Icelandic company and not subject to US laws in terms of how and when they run contests.

They chose the date because they are an Icelandic company, run by non-Americans and they probably had no idea that US Thanksgiving exists or that it is such huge deal in the States. Not being an American, the date doesn't b other me, though I can understand how Americans hoping to watch/participate could be.

Well I think they are just timing it with the new expansion. That way everyone is pumped up by the esporting, then the new expansion is there for new people to buy, or returning players to come back to.

well, since i don't trust ccp to apply any investigative effort into their own logs - AT ALL - the below is merely in jest

------ fantasy scenario that we know didn't happen --------ccp went back and checked their logs to find out if north american players logged off during past thanksgiving weekends and discovered a horrifying fact: they're all virgins who live in their moms basement with no lives so thanksgiving weekend for americans is heavy server load. lol

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